“By this Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (Notice), the Commission proposes to further increase the availability of broadband services onboard airplanes by establishing an air-ground mobile broadband service by which passengers aboard civil and government aircraft can connect to a full range of communications services while flying over the contiguous United States. Consumers increasingly demand ubiquitous broadband connectivity, even on airplanes. Demand continues to rise, with predictions that the number of aircraft offering broadband service will rise from approximately 3000 in 2012 to 15,000 by 2021.2 Establishment of air-ground mobile broadband service could help satisfy this demand. This air-ground mobile broadband service would operate in the 14.0-14.5 GHz band, on a secondary, non-interference basis with Fixed-Satellite Service (FSS) Earth-to-space communications. The key to such band sharing is spatial diversity, with FSS earth station antennas oriented to the south and above the horizon, air-ground mobile broadband base stations oriented to the north, and air-ground mobile broadband aircraft stations oriented below the horizon. Air-ground mobile broadband would be required
to protect primary FSS in the band from harmful interference, and would be required to accommodate other Federal and non-Federal users in the band. We ground our proposals in this proceeding in part on the service proposed by Qualcomm, Inc. (Qualcomm) in a Petition for Rulemaking filed on July 7, 2011.3 We believe our proposal would significantly increase the amount of spectrum available for the provision of wireless broadband to airborne aircraft, helping to meet rising demand for such services.

Follow beSpacific

Searchable Database – Over 40,000 Postings

Searchable database of over 40,000 postings!

Support beSpacific

Research updates provided daily since 2002, with an emphasis on primary sources.

2016 Awards for BeSpacific

American Bar Association

BeSpacific
NEW: “No one better has her finger on the pulse of the legal information world than Sabrina Pacifici, law librarian and author of the blog BeSpacific,” writes blogger Robert Ambrogi. “Launched in 2002, BeSpacific is one of the longest-running legal blogs and, remarkably, Sabrina seems more prolific today than ever. She posts multiple items every day, covering the gamut of law, technology and knowledge discovery and topics ranging from cybersecurity to legal research to government regulation to civil liberties to IP and more. For me, BeSpacific is one of my daily must-reads and has been for 14 years straight.”

Pages

LLRX

Sabrina is also the solo Editor, Publisher and Founder of LLRX.com® – Legal, technology and knowledge discovery resources on the “moving edge” for Librarians, Lawyers, Researchers, Academic and Public Interest Communities – launched in 1996.